AMD Ryzen is Clawing Back Sizable Market Share

AMD has recently announced its results for the first quarter of 2017 and despite the lower profits forecast, the company is making headlines as it begins to take back a massive chunk from its main competitor, Intel, due to the emergence of the AMD Ryzen CPU. In the first three months of 2017 AMD’s CPU market share made an increase of 2.2%, according to the PC benchmarking platform, PassMark.

The majority of AMD’s growth is thanks to its $400 blockbuster device, AMD Ryzen 7 1700X processor. The AMD Ryzen 7 1700x processor device reportedly has a superior clock speed and requires less power consumption than its Intel rival, Core i7 6900K chip, which retails at a whopping $1,000. For the first time in 14 consecutive quarters, AMD has finally established its place within the CPU industry. Whilst a growth of 2.2% may seem paltry in comparison to the strength of Intel’s dominance, the AMD Ryzen has proven that it is more than capable of giving its competitor a tough time in the near future.

The growing success of AMD’s Ryzen devices within the CPU industry still remains to be seen as these first quarter results actually account for only one month of sales. In the coming quarters, sales of Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 devices will eventually add up to provide a clearer picture of the difference that they are making within the industry. At present, AMD has just over 20% of market share in the CPU industry, while Intel still holds a daunting 79% of the lucrative market. AMD still has a long way to go to match up to Intel.

Yet there is still hope for Ryzen which has become apparent through the rising demand for AMD’s new devices. The company’s Ryzen CPU’s have been consistently going out of stock across the World and in major countries such as North America, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Despite Ryzen sales were stunted due to a severe shortage of AM4 motherboards. Now that AMD4 motherboards are available, and AMD has also launched Ryzen 5 devices, analysts think that second quarter results will aptly depict the potential of Ryzen.

Overall, AMD’s CPU user base in the first quarter jumped by 12%. This spectacular growth was mainly driven by Ryzen 7. Ryzen 7 is a perfect and low-cost option for workstation and professional applications, as it makes optimal use of all cores. However, the processor lags in performance when it comes to single-threaded applications. Some gaming analysts also suggest that Intel could beat AMD Ryzen with its low-cost, four-core i7-7700k.

AMD is, however, facing difficulties in its core business of GPUs. In the last quarter, the company forecasted an 11% sequential drop in its GPUs business. AMD is competing with NVIDIA on this turf. AMD dominates about 30% of the total GPU market, as of the last quarter of 2016, compared to 22% in the first quarter of the same year. But AMD stands a strong chance of growth in the GPU market. According to Jon Peddie Research, PC gaming hardware sales are expected to increase by 6% in 2017, amid a robust demand. AMD will launch brand new GPUs to compete with NVidia in 2017.